


Friction, Propagation

by choomchoom



Series: Destructive Interference (prowlrod spec ops au) [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22532596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Prowl deals with Hot Rod's arrival under his command. Getaway nearly loses his mind watching the two of them dance around each other. Hot Rod grapples with everything that getting involved with Prowl entails.
Relationships: Hot Rod/Prowl
Series: Destructive Interference (prowlrod spec ops au) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616956
Comments: 26
Kudos: 53





	1. Intake Interview

**Author's Note:**

> It's here! Prequel to Destructive Interference. I have about half the chapters drafted and the rest planned.

Hot Rod was hiding his nervousness well when he walked into Prowl’s office. His shoulders were straight and his gait was steady, but his EM field was being held too close to his frame for him not to be hiding _something_.

“Have a seat,” Prowl said, gesturing at the chair in front of him. Hot Rod did, curling his ankles around the legs of the chair to compensate for the fact that his feet didn’t touch the floor. The chair was adjustable, and he could have shortened it, but apparently his priority was to be able to look Prowl in the optics. “Why did you choose Special Operations?” Prowl asked.

“I had some, ah, disagreements with my last commander, and with the way that shook out I had to transfer somewhere,” Hot Rod said. “Spec Ops seemed like it would be a good fit.”

“You were written up by your commander fifteen times in the past year for defying orders,” Prowl said. “That’s a lot of times.”

“That’s how many times I thought he made a bad choice in battle,” Hot Rod said with a blithe shrug. “He’s very cautious. I’m not. We butted heads.”

“After a few weeks of training with Springer, you’re going to be working under me directly,” Prowl said. “How am I supposed to know that you won’t defy my orders too?”

“Well ideally, we’d be on the same page at the outset,” Hot Rod said. “You don’t seem like the type to call a retreat just because things are getting a little dangerous.”

“ _A little dangerous_ is too vague.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to assure me that you’re not going to waste my time training you if all you want is to get yourself killed.”

Hot Rod had been looking at Prowl steadily, so Prowl caught the brief flash of shock in his optics before he covered it. “I don’t want to get myself killed. I want to win this war.”

“Good.” Prowl appraised Hot Rod, who was clearly braced for more questioning in that vein, and decided that he had heard enough. “Tell me about the skills you’re hoping to utilize in spec ops.”

“I’m a quick thinker,” Hot Rod replied immediately. “I do my best work when I’m dropped right in the middle of something dangerous. I work well alone but I’d be alright at leading a small squad. I’m not good at being anyone’s underling.”

“You didn’t have to preemptively offer up your weaknesses,” Prowl said. “That was going to be my next question anyway.”

“Just figured you’d want to see the whole picture,” Hot Rod said, and Prowl was a little surprised as he admitted to himself that Hot Rod was right. Based on Hot Rod’s profile, Prowl had expected to have to muddle through half-answers and insubordination and reticence, but Hot Rod wasn’t doing any of it.

“I appreciate that,” Prowl said. “But that’s general advice. Don’t be so eager to give people information they can use to hurt you.”

Prowl was pleased to note that he seemed to have stunned Hot Rod into a rare silence at that, because Hot Rod only nodded in response.

“Anyway. Weaknesses – split them into two categories. Those you’d like the opportunity to work on, and those you see as unalterable that you’d like me to account for.”

“Oh,” said Hot Rod, surprise in his expression for just a moment, the emotion that Prowl always elicited with that question. It was ridiculous. How were they going to win this war if no other commanders took into account the ways that their soldiers might be able to grow? At least he could comfort himself with his certainty that the Decepticons were even worse. “Um – I don’t want to work on the insubordination thing. I really don’t think it’s worth it. But…I do want to work on my leadership.”

“Noted,” Prowl said. “Welcome to spec ops.”

He expected Hot Rod to thank him and leave, but he lingered, fidgeting a little in his chair. “If you don’t mind my asking – why’d you pick me? When I applied to transfer with the kind of record I had, I expected I’d be dead on the front lines somewhere inside a month.”

Prowl had been perfectly willing to leave Hot Rod’s long-past history out of it, but he’d asked, so Prowl answered. “You know that Optimus saw something special in you, when we met in Nyon. I did too. You’re someone who makes hard choices when you have to, and we need people like that in spec ops. We need people like that _alive_ if we’re going to win.”

“Oh.” Hot Rod stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. “I guess so? I think that I might draw different lines around that sort of thing than you do, though.”

“I suppose we’re going to find out.” And Prowl quite suddenly couldn’t deny that he was eager to.


	2. Five Theories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl grudgingly thinks about Hot Rod.

Something was wrong, and the problem was Hot Rod.

Something had shifted in a fundamental way since Hot Rod had arrived at the base, and determining what and why was proving to be more of a challenge than Prowl had expected. The uncertainty led him to keep a closer optic on Hot Rod than he typically kept on new recruits. Just until the problem was resolved.

Nobody else seemed to be especially bothered by him, which suggested that the problem was something that applied particularly to Prowl. And the main thing that separated Prowl from the rest with regard to Hot Rod was that he had met Hot Rod in Nyon.

Prowl spent more time than he really should have thinking about Nyon, that first week. It was one of the greatest early failures of the war, everyone knew that. It was, now that Prowl considered it, the first time he’d witnessed destruction on that kind of scale. He ran the situation they’d been in through his newer, more advanced combat modules, and came up with a few plans that would have had a greater chance of victory than what had actually happened, but all of them would have required at least three people to make different decisions than they had. It wasn’t some great failure of Prowl’s that had been lingering in his processor.

So that wasn’t the issue.

Prowl inadvertently ended up thinking quite a bit about Hot Rod, too. He quickly built up a list of attributes contrasting the Hot Rod who had joined his command to the one he’d met in Nyon. The younger Hot Rod had been more serious, which was quite likely a result of the dire situation he had been in. He’d had a confidence, a groundedness, which had naturally been shaken by the loss of his home and the failure of all his attempts to save it. His tendency to ask for help when overwhelmed was gone entirely, to an extent that it was probably a liability. The creative thinking, the boldness, and the social, personable nature were all intact.

After he’d ruled out Nyon as the problem, Prowl considered Hot Rod himself: specifically, the effect he had on people. Was Prowl just being affected by a strong personality the likes of which he’d never encountered before? Skids certainly didn’t do this to him, but Prowl knew that Skids turned every head and warmed every spark to him with ease.

Hot Rod wasn’t the same way, though – not with anyone but Prowl. He socialized, and he seemed to get along well enough with his compatriots, but they didn’t gravitate to Hot Rod the way Prowl felt himself drawn to him.

So it wasn’t that.

At that point Prowl became truly concerned. There was clearly something wrong, and since it wasn’t the obvious answers, that meant, in Prowl’s experience, probable danger.

Hot Rod was obviously _something_ of a danger; everyone was. On the surface, the most likely way that Hot Rod would pose a danger to the base would be his tendency to risk his life to protect others, even when logic dictated otherwise. Prowl could easily compensate for that by not putting him in any positions where he would have the opportunity to do so. The second most likely scenario was that Hot Rod’s tendency toward insubordination would, despite his track record of making better decisions in combat than his superiors, create a distraction or dissent in the ranks. Keeping him on his preferred solo missions or with small specialized squads could easily mitigate that.

These conclusions compelled Prowl to spend a day analyzing, from all the available data, the possibility that Hot Rod was an undercover Decepticon. It was unlikely even compared to the average probability that a soldier would turn out to be a spy, but Prowl’s processor was clearly trying to tell him something and he refused to make the mistake of ignoring it.

It took only a few hours to dismiss the possibility entirely. Hot Rod had had no contact with Decepticons since arriving at the base, and his previous track record showed a level of loyalty to the cause that completely precluded the possibility of him being a Decepticon spy. He was left still unsettled and feeling vaguely chastened for having ever considered the possibility.

That left the possibility that Hot Rod was an asset in a way that Prowl hadn’t yet noticed. His ability to produce a burst of flame from his body was something that Prowl hadn’t bothered to work into any potential battle plans because it was so costly as to be functionally useless. He went back and tried to include it, but the numerical results of those plans remained the same. He did the same thing with Hot Rod’s personable nature, his refusal to follow orders he didn’t agree with, and his skill at quick thinking in combat. There was nothing there that Prowl had failed to adequately account for.

So the problem wasn’t any of Hot Rod’s liabilities or skills, it was the whole of who he was. And Prowl couldn’t classify that as a problem, not when he had no reason to.

The problem must be Prowl himself. He knew that there were times when his processor overclocked itself and that when that happened, he could lose some of his ability to prioritize. He was desperate enough to shove aside work and delay several deadlines so that he could fit in a full uninterrupted recharge and defragmentation cycle, which usually fixed the problem when the fatigue was affecting his decision-making.

It didn’t help. Even with Prowl well-rested, the undue attention his processor wanted to pay to Hot Rod was still present.

Absent any malfunction, the only conclusion left to draw was that Prowl was preoccupied with Hot Rod…because he was preoccupied with Hot Rod. It was entirely internal.

It was only after rejecting every other possibility that it occurred to Prowl that the feeling was familiar.

It had been a long time since he had been…interested in someone, platonically, romantically, whatever. His processor had been so entirely wrapped up in the war, ever since the middle of his relationship with Mesothulas, and he’d…honestly, he’d assumed that along the way, he’d lost the capacity.

And here Hot Rod was, bright and present, a star in Prowl’s life around whom he would happily orbit.

It wasn’t old history.

It wasn’t Hot Rod’s personality.

It wasn’t that Hot Rod was a liability.

It wasn’t that Hot Rod was an asset.

It wasn’t Prowl’s processor glitching.

Prowl was in love with Hot Rod.

It was inconvenient, but it was better to know than not. Prowl could account for it, and he could keep it to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prowl: this new recruit gives me weird feelings in my spark  
> Prowl: It must be because he’s an undercover decepticon


	3. Getaway's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Month

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War is hell. Watching Prowl develop feelings is also hell. 
> 
> Getaway is forced to be a side character in his commander's soap opera.

In another universe, Getaway might have liked Hot Rod. He was funny and sweet, effusive enough to carry on a conversation with just about anyone, good at his job, and shared Getaway’s rather ostentatious fashion sense.

In this universe, Hot Rod was making Getaway’s life a living hell.

For half a day, it was _fascinating_ to see what Hot Rod was doing to the base’s commander. Hot Rod had Prowl destabilized, unlocked in a way that Getaway had never seen him before and had never expected to, and he didn’t seem to even be aware that he was doing it. It wasn’t even just that he commanded Prowl’s attention. There was something about Prowl’s interactions with Hot Rod that Getaway could only describe as gentleness.

Getaway made the mistake of hoping that love, or whatever bizarre replicate of it this was, would be enough to calm Prowl down. Of course that was too good to be true.

Getaway had the misfortune to be assigned as team leader for Hot Rod’s first away mission. After the two-hour lecture from Prowl in his office about sustainable leadership practices and role-modeling personal safety and responsibility, Getaway assumed he’d survived the worst of it.

Foolish of him.

On the mission, he could hardly see through Prowl’s urgent messages demanding updates and last-minute addendums to the lecture from hell. He never asked about Hot Rod specifically, of course, which was awfully convenient for him. If Getaway complained about it, Prowl could simply say that Getaway’s performance required that kind of obnoxiously strict supervision.

The mission went fine in spite of Prowl. The goal had been to gather intel on a new Decepticon manufacturing facility, and the team had barely needed to peek in the windows to be able to see that the product being manufactured was those grossly inefficient prisoners-turned-bombs that they’d all thought the Decepticons had left behind early in the war. The prisoners were obviously being stored in a bunker at the bottom of the facility, and getting them out would require either a full-scale assault team or detailed geophysical maps, neither of which Getaway had. The team slipped away with no casualties and the Decepticons none the wiser.

You couldn’t tell that from Prowl’s mood when he pulled Getaway into his office after the mission. He grilled Getaway about every aspect of the mission as though a catastrophe had occurred.

Tellingly, he still managed to not mention Hot Rod by name.

Getaway was only released when Hot Rod himself showed up following a creative ping from Getaway reminding him the he probably would need to check in with Prowl to schedule his own debriefing. Prowl promptly kicked Getaway out of his office, and despite the fact that he’d been fantasizing about washing off and recharging as soon as physically possible, he was curious enough to feign walking away for Prowl’s benefit and then linger outside the door.

“We’re going back, right?” Hot Rod began.

“Please be more specific.”

Getaway widened his optics in incredulity. _Please_? From _Prowl?_

“They have we don’t even know how many Autobot prisoners that they’re going to turn into bombs so that they can die a horrible death. We need to do _something_.”

“Of course we do,” Prowl said, smooth and calm in comparison to Hot Rod’s fast-paced pleading. “And we, as in _we the Autobot army_ , will. You _personally_ will not be going back there. You’re not a front lines soldier anymore.”

“But –”

“Hot Rod, we’ve already talked about this.”

There was a brief silence. Getaway could practically see Prowl’s blazing glare through the steel of the closed door. “Yeah. We did.”

“Your mission was successful. While you’re stationed at spec ops, you need to learn to internalize that and move on. There will be a lot of missions that you won’t be seeing through to victory.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

“Do I have to be?”

“I suppose you don’t.”

A group of officers turned into the hallway and Getaway sprung away from Prowl’s door to pretend that he was just out for a casual stroll. Probably best not to hear anything else, anyway.

**

When Getaway returned from his next mission a few weeks later, Hot Rod was out on his first spec ops solo mission and Prowl was losing his mind.

“He’s on a rampage,” Skids warned Getaway in a whisper on the way to his scheduled debriefing. Getaway seriously considered faking a mysterious illness when he saw the shell-shocked expression on Prowl’s previous victim leaving his own meeting.

Appealing as the prospect was, it was probably too late, and Getaway was beginning to admit that maybe there was a small part of himself that enjoyed witnessing the drama. He stepped into Prowl’s office and immediately wished that he’d at least grabbed a shot of his contraband distilled engex before submitting himself to this.

Prowl was putting on a good show of being inscrutable as ever, but he was obviously distracted. He was never one to make optic contact, but today his gaze was jumping around instead of settling in its usual spot slightly to the left of Getaway’s head. He was typically the one to start debriefings, but several seconds passed without him speaking before Getaway began to wither in the awkwardness. “You got my report?”

“Yes. I’m going to assemble a similar team to follow up on Kallikar soon. We don’t know whether Scorponok’s notes on the initiative are complete or to what extent they reflect his own biases.”

That was as close to a “Good work” as Prowl ever gave. “That’s all?”

Finally, Prowl’s attention was on him. Whoops. That was a mistake. “Do you have something else to say?”

“Nope! Nope. Nothing else. Am I dismissed?”

“There’s clearly something else.”

Well, maybe someone had to say it. “I was warned by some of the others that you’ve been acting erratically. Sir.”

“Is that so?”

“Obviously it was just a rumor that isn’t at _all_ founded in reality.”

“You’re dismissed.”

“Yes sir.”

Getaway walked out wondering if he would be able to convince Skids that it would probably be best to have Hot Rod quietly killed.

He was cursing himself for thinking the thought a day later, when Hot Rod being killed became a real possibility. Prowl assembled a squad to be on standby what seemed like the _instant_ Hot Rod missed his scheduled check-in, and they launched as soon as they had confirmation that Hot Rod was in trouble – his shuttle had been misidentified as a Decepticon craft by the resistance force on the planet that the mission had been on and they’d tried to shoot him down before he left atmo. He’d made it into space, but the shuttle was too damaged to make it back home and the Decepticons would probably spot him soon on one of their regular supply runs.

Getaway was _happy_ to go to hostile territory to rescue him if it meant he didn’t have to be in the base with Prowl.

The rendezvous went fine, and Hot Rod was doing well enough for someone who’d nearly been shot out of the sky in a flimsy single-passenger shuttle and then piloted that damaged shuttle through Decepticon territory for three days. He even managed a smile for Getaway and Skids when they came through the merged airlocks to help him into their own shuttle. He would never admit it, but in that moment, Getaway could appreciate what it was about him that had Prowl so off his game.

They ditched the shuttle, which was too damaged to ever fly back to Autobot space, and made it back without any problems. Getaway and Skids dumped Hot Rod with the medics and, like Getaway should have expected, practically ran into Prowl in the doorway as they were leaving.

Getaway lingered in the lobby of the base’s tiny medical facility, from which it was easy to hear every word Prowl and Hot Rod were saying. Skids sighed in obvious disapproval, but he didn’t leave either.

“Hey! I made it back. Uh, mostly in one piece.”

“I’m sorry.”

Getaway made an astonished face at Skids, who returned it. He was already kicking himself for not having recorded that. Prowl saying _sorry_ wasn’t something you heard every millennium.

“What?” And of course Hot Rod didn’t even appreciate it properly.

“This shouldn’t have happened. I should have predicted –”

“Hey. No. It’s war. We both know that. You’re really good at controlling _almost_ everything, but life is random. There’s always going to be stuff even you can’t account for. I don’t blame you.”

“I blame me.”

“That’s okay. I get that. You know I get that. But – maybe you could blame yourself later, somewhere else?”

“You want me to leave?”

“No! Definitely no. I was cooped up on that stupid shuttle by myself for three days, and…I want to talk to you, if you have time. About anything other than that.”

“I suppose I can do that.” There was a noise from the room and Getaway tensed, preparing to look busy, but then it became clear that it was just Prowl pulling out a chair to sit down.

“You wouldn’t…do this for everyone, would you?”

There was a long silence, then, “No.”

“So…why me?” Hot Rod sounded genuinely nervous, and Getaway didn’t even want to think about what that might mean.

“I want you to be safe. And…I want to be near you.”

“Is that all?”

Silence.

“Because I’d like that too. And some other things.”

And briefly, it was silent again.

When it became inescapably obvious that Hot Rod and Prowl were kissing in there, Skids grabbed Getaway’s wrist and bodily dragged him out of the medical bay. When they reached the hallway, Getaway sighed and held out a hand, where Skids promptly placed a heavy credit chip. At least he’d bet well and made some Shanix out of this whole miserable drama. Getaway intended to be very far away when all of it inevitably exploded.


	4. Illusion of Safety

The explosion came out of nowhere. One moment Hot Rod was in the mess hall, chatting with some people he’d been training with, and the next he was on the floor, optics burning from the heat, and half of the wall was gone.

An alarm started wailing and the first coherent thought Hot Rod managed was _well, no shit_. He climbed to his feet, surprised to find that he was pretty much in one piece, just dinged up from some debris. As his optics recalibrated, he realized why: the other recruit he’d been chatting with, who looked like he probably turned into a truck, had taken the brunt of the blast. He was coughing, curled on his side on the floor, a grotesque hole blasted through the side of his chassis.

Hot Rod knelt next to him, looking him over for other damage. With a chest wound like that, his spark casing might be cracked, but his legs looked like they’d work.

“Get up. We need to evacuate,” Hot Rod said, doing his best to help the truck to his feet despite his groans of protest. They weren’t far from the evac ships – this planet had always been disputed territory, and Prowl had made then run through weekly evac drills from the first week Hot Rod had been here.

Hot Rod felt a flash of worry at the thought of Prowl that he clamped down on instantly. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to think about him, not now. Prowl could and would take care of himself. The other recruit needed Hot Rod’s help.

Skids stepped in to help Hot Rod support the truck’s weight all the way to the shuttles, where a medic took Hot Rod’s place and led him away. The first evac ships were already filled and the engines were charging, but Hot Rod had felt at least another two strikes hit the base as he’d been making his way here and he couldn’t see Prowl anywhere. As he stood there, someone came crawling into the evac center with the bottom half of both legs blown off and Hot Rod’s spark made the decision for him. He wasn’t leaving this place until he’d saved everyone he could.

He commed Prowl as he slipped out the door, transforming and racing back toward the mess hall. << _Where are you_??>>

_< <My office. I’m securing some documents. Have you evacuated?>>_

_< <Um.>>_

_< <Hot Rod!>>_

_< <There are people injured. I’m going to help get them to the ships.>>_

There was silence on Prowl’s end of the comm for a few seconds, then, << _Be careful. >>_

Those words, so much better than _don’t_ despite Prowl’s obvious reluctance, gave Hot Rod a sudden burst of desire to survive this.

He reached the mess hall and helped one of the archivists do a quick and dirty field patch on his friend. He opened the door of the mess hall to a Decepticon’s gun.

Hot Rod was grateful that he’d been the one to open the door as he shoved the gun out of the way and tackled the Decepticon, rolling the both of them down the hallway to get them away from the archivists. He didn’t want to take his chances in hand to hand, so he lit up, burning the con’s frame until he went limp and Hot Rod could crawl out from under him.

He stumbled away, feeling suddenly a dozen separate bangs and scrapes, and commed Prowl. << _Decepticons in the base! >>_

_< <I know. Your route to evacuate is clear_.>>

That meant that Prowl still had access to the security cams, which meant that was still in his office.

_< <I’m not getting on that ship until everyone else does, so tell me what I can do.>>>_

Most of Hot Rod’s previous superiors would have argued with him. The only exceptions were those who would have escalated immediately to threats and the one who would have simply cut his comm line and left Hot Rod to fend for himself.

Prowl didn’t do any of those things. << _Go to your right. There’s a backup armory. Get as many smoke bombs and flares as you can carry. Then get into the vent system. I’ll direct you. You’re going to be distracting specific groups to clear a pathway for the rest of the soldiers to get out. >>_

Hot Rod sped away and did as he was asked.

A few smoke bombs later, he admitted to himself that he was having fun. If he had to be in the middle of a crisis, he’d rather be here, helping people, with Prowl’s voice in his comm, than be anywhere else.

_< <What next?>> _Hot Rod asked when he’d managed to get a squad of Decepticons shooting at a sparkler he’d dropped down the hall from them while a group of Autobots snuck past. Prowl didn’t respond. Hot Rod assumed he was just formulating the next bit of his strategy.

He _still_ didn’t respond.

_< <Prowl?>>_

There was a moment, very precise, when confusion turned to dread.

Hot Rod crawled through the air vent to the next hallway, where he dropped to the floor and raced to Prowl’s office as fast as he could. There were two Decepticons outside Prowl’s office, which filled Hot Rod with fear before the third one even carried Prowl out. Energon dripped to the floor where someone had shot Prowl in the side. His optics were dark and the plating on his face was dented badly enough to make Hot Rod flinch.

The ‘cons had all turned toward Hot Rod by the time he’d processed all this, and Hot Rod was still accelerating. He transformed mid-charge and unstoppered one of the flares, lighting it in the nearest con’s face. From there, it was a simple matter to grab that con’s gun and use it to shoot the other two. A bullet caught Hot Rod in the process, but the injury wasn’t bad enough to keep him from kneeling next to Prowl, whose optics were flickering slightly already.

Hot Rod put one hand on the uninjured side of Prowl’s chin and felt Prowl press lightly down on it in acknowledgement. “You there?” Hot Rod asked, surprising himself with how desperate his voice came out.

Prowl grabbed at Hot Rod’s wrist instead of speaking – which was probably the easier option, given the state of the plating near his vocalizer. Hot Rod helped him up and stayed under his shoulder all the way to the evac center, where they boarded the last of the shuttles.

* * *

The medic that happened to be with them on the ship had tried to kick Hot Rod out of the medical bay, but he had stopped short of physically moving him, so Hot Rod was still sitting by Prowl’s bedside. The medic had put Prowl in forced stasis to bang out heavy dents in his plating and straighten pinched fuel lines, and now Hot Rod was just waiting for him to wake up.

Prowl’s biolights flashed and he flinched. Hot Rod looked around to ensure that no person and no cameras were watching and then he took Prowl’s hand, hoping to give him something at least a little bit pleasant to wake up to. Prowl squeezed it as if on reflex, and soon enough his optics were blinking online for real.

“Hey,” Hot Rod said softly. Prowl’s vocalizer made a crackling noise and he tried to shift toward Hot Rod, flinching from the effort.

Hot Rod got the hint and scooted his chair closer, putting his free hand on the side of Prowl’s helm to avoid disturbing the mess of damage on his face. 

<< _Who’s ranking on this ship?_ >> Prowl asked over comms.

“Besides you? I think Springer.”

<< _Tell him to alert the fleet that we need to UV sterilize all the ships. The Decepticons must have used dispersing airborne tracking nannites to find the base. There’s a small chance some could have ended up inside._ >>

“How –” Cold gripped Hot Rod’s spark. “It was me, wasn’t it? That bomb that hit my shuttle on Aluria.”

<< _Wasn’t the natives at all, and they were aiming to find us, not kill you. They fooled all of us. Tell Springer._ >>

“Yeah, yeah,” Hot Rod said, standing up and trying to pretend it didn’t feel like the world was spinning more unsteadily with every step he took. All those broken bodies in the mess hall, all the tech they’d had to abandon and beyond that the loss of the semblance of safety of having a base on an otherwise empty world, Prowl prone in a mediberth – his fault, all of it. He closed his hands into fists to stop them shaking.

He managed to relay the message to Springer and Springer assigned other passengers to initiate the scan and contact the other ships, freeing Hot Rod to return to Prowl’s side.

With the urgent matter taken care of, Prowl didn’t ask anything else of him. He had his optics on when Hot Rod came back but closed them when Hot Rod was by his side, resting even though Hot Rod could tell that he was awake by the clicking sounds every few minutes that were Prowl testing his vocalizer.

He held tightly to Hot Rod’s hand. Hot Rod was sure he could feel it shaking. He didn’t pull away. If anyone had to notice, he was glad that it was Prowl.

* * *

The ships retreated to an already crowded base on the edge of Autobot-held territory. When they landed, things immediately descended into chaos. The passengers on one ship had found a few of the nannites and vaporized them, but the base security insisted that all the ships and survivors on them be quarantined until they had a chance to do their own scans.

Prowl was doing better by the time they landed – well enough to issue orders in a gravelly voice through still-healing facial plating, not well enough to walk more than a few steps. Hot Rod ended up having to climb through engine rooms of half the ships which didn’t have passengers small enough to do the kind of scans the base were insisting on, and he was exhausted by the time the quarantine was finally lifted. He got a room assignment and a ration of energon from the security guards who had been assigned to check them in and pinged Prowl as soon as he was inside.

Prowl just sent him a room number, and Hot Rod wandered around for a bit before asking for directions from a friendly-looking guard.

“That’s officer’s quarters. What do you need up there?” the guard asked.

“Meeting with my supervisor,” Hot Rod said, instead of the cutting _none of your_ fucking _business_ his processor wanted to produce.

He got directions out of the niceness, though, and soon enough he was knocking on Prowl’s door. The noises from inside indicated Prowl levering himself up from the berth and slowly making his way over to unlock it.

“Hi,” Hot Rod said, feeling half the tension in his body fall flat just at the sight of Prowl, a private room, and the illusion of safety.

“Hi.” Prowl’s voice was soft now that he wasn’t trying to keep up the illusion of being in control for the rest of the soldiers, and he was leaning heavily on the doorframe. Hot Rod ducked under his arm to help him back across the room and kicked the door shut behind them.

He deposited Prowl onto the narrow berth and then crawled in next to him. Small as Hot Rod was, they had to be nearly squished together for Hot Rod to fit, which suited Hot Rod just fine. He rested his helm on Prowl’s chest, making sure to avoid disturbing the freshly patched wound in his side, and finally let the situation overwhelm him.

It took Prowl’s hand settling on his back for him to realize that he was shaking all over, engine snarling as it overclocked itself with his distress.

“I’m sorry,” he eventually choked out. He meant it more for the people who had died, who had lost their possessions and maybe a place that they considered a real home, than he did for Prowl, who he knew wouldn’t blame him. If _Prowl himself_ hadn’t realized that damaging Hot Rod’s shuttle was a trick, he certainly wouldn’t have expected that of Hot Rod. But still. He’d made it home, and he’d put everyone in danger, and he’d made it out, and some of the others hadn’t.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Prowl said, which wasn’t exactly comforting, even coming from him.

“It’s all my fault,” Hot Rod said into Prowl’s chest plating, half expecting the pieces to fully click into place in Prowl’s mind and for Prowl to push him away.

“It isn’t,” Prowl said. Hot Rod recognized the authoritative tone, knew in his processor that he should believe Prowl when he talked like that, but the sting of guilt overcame the logic. “You didn’t make any of the choices that led to what happened.”

“I could have figured it out. I could have recognized the artillery, or scanned the ship just in case.”

“None of that makes it your fault. You didn’t decide to drop a bomb on your friends.”

“That doesn’t matter when I _could have stopped it_.”

“What do you want from me?”

The question was unexpected enough that Hot Rod raised his helm to look Prowl in the optics. “What?”

“You keep saying it’s your fault somehow, and I keep denying it, and you keep arguing. Do you want me to keep talking until I change your mind? Do you want me to support your wallowing in misplaced guilt? What do you want?”

“I don’t want either of those things,” Hot Rod said, settling back against Prowl. He considered the question. Horrible as it felt now, he knew from experience that the sting of guilt would fade with time. He didn’t need Prowl’s logic, and he didn’t need Prowl to lie in order to validate his feelings. He just needed time. “Will you just stay there? And hold me?”

Prowl’s arm secured itself around Hot Rod. There was an upsetting guardedness to his voice as he said, “I can do that.”


	5. Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The final chapter. This chapter is mostly about sleep issues, including nightmares, but nothing particularly heavy. Just wanted to write about another little way that these two could be surprisingly compatible.

Hot Rod had only been recharging for a few hours when he stirred and then woke completely within a few seconds. His whole frame tensed with a flinch and his ventilations stuttered before he relaxed with what looked like some effort, curling back against Prowl.

Prowl was willing to ignore it and let Hot Rod fall back asleep on his own, but Hot Rod blinked his optics online and unplugged the recharge cable from his chest. It was always uncomfortable on a conscious frame. “You’re still up,” he said.

“I don’t recharge much,” Prowl said, scribbling a note on the datapad he was working on.

How Rod laid a warm hand on Prowl’s chest plating. Prowl froze, stylus hovering over the datapad, caught up in the superstition that Hot Rod would remove his hand if Prowl moved. “Why not?” Hot Rod asked.

Prowl didn’t often give people the honest answer to that question, because usually, it wasn’t any of their business. But if Hot Rod was going to be sharing his berth regularly, it was prudent for him to know. And Prowl could always send him away if he started spreading rumors about it.

“My processor…wasn’t optimized in everything. It was at the prototype stage when I was constructed, and as far as I can tell, it never went past that stage.”

Hot Rod’s optics had gone huge. Prowl rolled his own. “Oh, don’t – it doesn’t _bother_ me, I’m just explaining. I’ve got processes running in the background, lots of them, all the time, and I don’t think I have as much control over them as most people do. It makes it hard to shut down.”

“So – wait. Do you _ever_ recharge?

“Of course I do.” This. This was the reason Prowl didn’t _talk_ about this. “When something crashes or is forced to terminate because of RAM lag, it ripples out and shuts off everything else. It wastes a lot of time, I have to restart it all after. But with the war going on, it’s impossible to time breaks when I never know what’s going to happen next.”

“This is probably a stupid question, but can’t you just pause them?” Hot Rod asked.

Prowl shook his head. “Not a stupid question. No, I can’t. It’s what I’m built to do.”

“But when we –” Hot Rod’s fingers played over the port cover to his own hardline cable, indicating a tactic the two of them had used to try to resolve arguments. “Were there a thousand background processes running that whole time?”

“No, _that_ pauses it,” Prowl clarified. “It’s a failsafe, to make sure there’s enough attentional power free to keep people from hacking into my processor. I can’t control it.”

“But it works.”

Prowl shrugged, not quite sure what Hot Rod was on about.

Hot Rod repositioned himself so that he was sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing Prowl. “Do you think you’d be able to sleep during a hardline?”

Prowl stared at him. He had never considered that before and probably never would have if Hot Rod hadn’t brought it up. It was a possibility, a real one, that Prowl had completely overlooked. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to try?” Hot Rod asked, like Prowl had known that he would.

And Prowl…considered it. The prospect of being able to recharge without a system crash first and losing gigabytes of work was _very_ appealing, and sleeping plugged into Hot Rod sounded…more pleasant than he would have expected. His firewalls were automatic, Hot Rod wouldn’t be able to see anything he shouldn’t in Prowl’s processor even if he tried, which he wouldn’t do. Optics scrutinizing Hot Rod for any signs of discomfort, he nodded.

Hot Rod clicked open his port cover and handed his cable to Prowl. Prowl passed over his own. He set his work aside and plugged in the recharge cable on his chest. Then he laid down and shuttered his optics, feeling Hot Rod settle in next to him.

Hot Rod was thinking in his usual chaotic, roundabout way, concepts racing through his mind too fast to turn into language. When he sensed Prowl’s presence, the whirlwind oriented towards him. Hot Rod cycled through feelings of care and comfort and flashes of worry, and in a half-conscious moment before falling asleep, Prowl recognized that the wild and imprecise thoughts circling Hot Rod’s processor were beautiful to him.

* * *

Prowl came online with the same sense of dread he always did, but it was muted immediately by the realization that his mind was still tethered to Hot Rod’s. Hot Rod had helped him recharge without losing any vital processing streams. Hot Rod would have woken him if there had been an emergency that required his attention.

Hot Rod was awake and handling Prowl’s rising consciousness tenderly, steady but not pressing. Prowl allowed himself a few minutes to just stay there. He couldn’t remember ever having felt safer.

As soon as the novelty started to wear off, he onlined his optics and went to disconnect the recharge cable from his chest. He felt better rested than he had since before the start of the war. Hot Rod was awake beside him, contentedly playing a built-in game on one of Prowl’s less-secure datapads. He’d reached the 311th level.

When had he had time –? Prowl pushed a little more awareness into the link between them and tried to hide the way it stung when Hot Rod shied away. Next to Prowl, Hot Rod shut the datapad off and turned towards him.

“Good morning,” he said, deflecting.

Prowl pressed a little harder through the link. Had Hot Rod recharged at all since he’d come up with his little idea to help Prowl? If not, why hadn’t he?

Hot Rod pushed Prowl out of his mind with surprising force. Prowl was still taken aback by that when Hot Rod broke off the physical connection.

“You could have used _words_ to ask me to get out. There was no need to jump straight to brute force,” Prowl said, tucking his cable away and looking up at the ceiling instead of at Hot Rod.

“You could have used words to ask me whatever you wanted to ask me, and not jumped straight to digging through my mind,” Hot Rod rejoined.

Prowl wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Noted,” he said. “So what is it?”

Prowl’s gaze had slid back over to Hot Rod, who was, he had to admit, more interesting to look at than anything else in the room, even when he was being irritating. Hot Rod had put away his own cable and hiked his legs up, curling into the pose he always did when he was feeling vulnerable.

After Prowl had disclosed what he had last night, it made him more uncomfortable than he would ever admit that Hot Rod was being reticent about whatever this was.

As he started to answer, though, his voice shook, and Prowl’s irritation bled away as he realized that Hot Rod’s discomfort here probably had little to do with Prowl personally. “I get a lot of bad recharge feedback. I – it’s on and off but it’s been bad ever since the attack.” The attack, Prowl mentally filled in, that he still blamed himself for despite the numerous conversations they had wherein Prowl had explained in every way he knew how that he shouldn’t. Prowl could guess what the dreams were about. “It’s not that I’m trying to hide it, but – I didn’t want to risk subjecting you to that, especially while you were trying something new.”

“There was no reason to hide that. You know I wouldn’t have judged you.”

“You didn’t tell me about your whole recharge thing until I asked you directly.”

That was…fair. “Has anything ever helped?”

“It goes away on its own, eventually. Engex helps, but I don’t think that’s really a solution.”

Prowl thought about that. Engex blocked certain processor functions, which could be replicated by mnemosurgery, but the specific connection of Hot Rod’s that was going overactive during recharge...having a foreign set of memories to try to access had to be higher priority than reliving trauma. Maybe the same thing could help him.

* * *

Hot Rod lingered on the edge of the berth, tense like he was ready to transform and bolt. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asked for the fifth or sixth time.

“Hot Rod, I could reassure you by saying I’ve seen plenty of horrible things in this war, but...you know I know what those dreams are about. I was there. I’ll be awake, and if it doesn’t work I’ll wake you up before either of us sees too much,” Prowl said.

Hot Rod’s face fell. He didn’t look ready to run anymore, but with the way he curled into himself on the corner of the berth and stared at the cable, Prowl could tell there was still something wrong.

“What?”

Hot Rod glared, but there wasn’t much heat to it. He didn’t make Prowl repeat himself, though. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

That was probably true. “But it’s obviously important to you.”

Hot Rod sighed. “It feels wrong to try to make it go away, to use you to do it. With what I did...it’s the least I deserve.”

“Moral desert is a logical fallacy,” Prowl said, already digging through his subspace to hand Hot Rod the credit chip he owed him each time he used the term ‘logical fallacy.’ “What happened, happened. You get to decide how you approach it. Even if the memory is making it difficult.”

“Thanks,” Hot Rod said. Prowl didn’t think he’d actually taken any of that into his worldview, but Hot Rod also plugged in the cable, signaling the end of the conversation.

Prowl plugged Hot Rod’s cable into his own side and adjusted himself, holding his arm out for Hot Rod to slide under. Hot Rod tucked himself into the proffered space, resting his head on Prowl’s shoulder. Prowl stroked his back with one hand and thumbed through a datapad with the other as Hot Rod slowly relaxed and finally slipped into recharge.

The contact was grounding, and Prowl plowed through work despite the minor distraction of Hot Rod pressed against him and their minds linked. Hot Rod’s mind stayed quiet, mostly, but reached out toward Prowl once or twice in a way that Prowl suspected might have turned into traumatic memory retrieval if Prowl’s mind hadn’t been there instead.

Prowl waited through the start of his shift for Hot Rod to wake up on his own. He probably hadn’t been getting real restful recharge for all the weeks since the attack. Eventually he shifted against Prowl and Prowl strengthened his side of the connection a bit, sending over his own comfort and contentment, probably slipping in his satisfaction from how much work he’d managed to get done.

Hot Rod curled his fingers further into Prowl’s plating. There had been a point in the middle of the night when Prowl had been eager to get back to his desk, where he could take calls and work with both hands, but right now he couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere but here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for following this odd little AU! I'm often talking about obscure Prowl rarepairs over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/SciFiWithSwords)


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